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October was the month for conferences

October seemed to be the month for conferences and presentations for me. I presented twice with colleagues at the Georgia Library Association’s annual conference (COMO) and also late in October at Internet Librarian. With so much traveling and being out of the office in October, November got away from me and here we are, already rushing through December. Rather than try to create a new topic for this month, I’d like to post links and reflect on some of my presentations in October.

First up was the Annual Georgia Library Association meeting. Kennesaw State University was out in full force at this event with many presentations, often at same time from one another. The guys from Unshelved were keynote speakers. I love their comic strips, but I had a presentation slot directly after them and was not able to attend their presentation. I could hear the laughter from the room as well as the roar of applause at the end, so I know it was a great session, and one that I was sorry to miss.

My first presentation was with my previous manager from Georgia Tech, Lori Critz. We presented: “Reaching the Forgotten Demographic: Customizing Services for Graduate Students.” Because our PowerPoint was mostly a collection of screenshots from other universities as a kind of smorgasbord of the types of graduate programming occurring in libraries around the country, we did not post it online after the conference for copyright reasons. We looked at other research institutions’ library websites to discover what types of unique or interesting services and spaces they were offering for graduate students. We hope to expand our research in the coming year to look at comprehensive universities (like Kennesaw State University) as well.

I also presented with my new co-worker and past collaborator for this blog, Elisabeth Shields. Our presentation: Knowledge Mapping Tools: Visualizing Research was an overview of the different kinds of knowledge mapping useful to academics and the different uses of each. We considered concept mapping, mind mapping and argument mapping. Each of these tools, while often lumped together, actually have distinct features and applications which are most effective for creating each. Elisabeth has studied Knowledge Mapping extensively and posted several wonderful in-depth articles here on this blog on the topic, and I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about concept mapping and argument mapping which are used more extensively in the humanities and social sciences which she supports.

Finally, I rounded out the month with a trip across the country to present at Internet Librarian in Monterey, California. There I presented Content Curation: Academic Outreach Opportunities Beyond the Institutional Repository. This is a topic that I feel really strongly about and see great opportunities for librarians to step up and help our faculty and students organize their personal research content. There are so many content curation tools on the web and those who effectively use these tools have a networking advantage to their peers who do not interact or follow the content produced on these tools. My presentation gave an overview of several examples where academics were already incorporating content curation tools in their instruction, and I provided several ideas on how librarians might begin to become involved.

As the Christmas and New Year’s season continues to rush toward us, I want to take this opportunity to thank each of you continuing to follow this blog. I am looking forward to returning next January energized and ready to explore PKM with each of you.